Child Safety Seats

Despite improved trends, many children still ride unrestrained in autos

Posted: Sunday, January 30, 2000

GREG CUNNINGHAM

Christina Hughes doesn't need anyone to convince her of the importance of child safety seats. She only has to look at her 2-year-old daughter, Angela Barela, playing in the corner of the living room near a battered brown vinyl car seat. That seat saved her daughter's life during a terrible car crash.

"If she hadn't been in that car seat when the wreck happened, she wouldn't be with us today," Hughes said. "I lie awake at night still, thinking about how if I had had her in the front seat for some reason, I would have lost my youngest daughter."

The wreck happened Aug. 20, when Hughes stopped at the mailbox as she returned to her home two miles north of Asarco. She didn't notice the pickup traveling south on State Highway 136 at about 70 mph as she tried to make a U-turn in her Ford Tempo. The driver of the pickup was unable to stop and slammed into the passenger side of Hughes' car with such force that both vehicles flew through a ditch and into a field bordering the highway.

The impact crushed the passenger side of the car, where Hughes' daughter was strapped into the back seat, pushing the door into the driver's side seat. The rear portion of the car was bent around the child seat, wedging it into the corner so that most of the seat was covered by metal.

Angela, safe in the tiny space protected by the car seat, escaped with only a few small cuts caused by flying glass.

Hughes was not so lucky. She was flown by Lifestar to Northwest Texas Hospital, where she spent several days on the critical list with broken bones and a punctured lung.

When Hughes returned home, she saw the crushed car sitting in the driveway of her home - the family still owes money on the totaled car, so they can't get rid of it yet - and said she was struck by just how lucky her child was to be alive.

"If anybody thinks they don't need to use a child seat, they ought to come out to my house and take a look at my car and then take a look at my daughter," Hughes said. "It takes, what, about 30 seconds to put them in a seat? If I hadn't taken that 30 seconds, I wouldn't have my daughter right now."

Hughes has kept the car seat that saved her daughter's life, but it won't be used again, thanks to the Potter / Randall Safe Kids Coalition. Since car seats are not supposed to be reused after an accident, Department of Public Safety Trooper L.B. Snider presented Hughes with a new one Tuesday.

Angela seems to have taken to the new seat, and her mother said she will use it every time they get in a car. But she said she hopes it will never be put to the test like the old one was.

Hughes and other parents are getting the message about car seats, but a significant number of local residents are still putting their children at risk, according to the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.

Annual studies found that 54.5 percent of Amarillo children were unrestrained in 1996, and although the numbers are getting better, 27.4 percent of children were still not restrained in 1998.

Dr. Eric N. Levy has seen many of the children injured and killed in Panhandle car wrecks in his position as a pediatric intensivist with Amarillo Area Healthcare Specialists. He and his colleagues treat children who are critically ill or injured, including traffic accident victims.

He said any parent who had seen the tragedies he has seen would never question the need for safety seats.

"When you deal with this day in and day out, the names and the faces change, but unfortunately the circumstances remain the same," Levy said. "To see the beauty of a child, the wonder, the curiosity, all the things that are a part of every child so senselessly extinguished, it's a tragedy for everyone involved."

Levy said he and his colleagues see dozens of children a year who are victims of traffic accidents, and the one constant is that children in safety seats suffer a much lower occurrence of serious injuries.

"The difference is like night and day; life and death," Levy said. "You see the child who was restrained and not ejected, and they're typically much better. That child comes to the emergency room and is released that night or perhaps stays overnight for observation. The child who was not restrained comes in pretty much lifeless. We try to revive them and sometimes they live, but often they don't."

Levy's experience is backed by local statistics. The Panhandle Child Fatality Review Team said 102 children died in traffic accidents in the Texas Panhandle between 1994 and 1998. About half the deaths were due to improper restraints, the report said.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Association reports that in crashes involving infants, car seats reduce fatalities 71 percent in passenger cars and 58 percent in vans and light trucks. Children ages 1 to 4 are 54 percent less likely to die if they are restrained in car seats.

The cost for parents who ignore the statistics can be extraordinarily high, Levy said.

"It is painful for me to tell a family that their son or daughter is going to heaven," Levy said. "I'm looking at my children's pictures right now and I can't even imagine the pain a parent must feel in that situation.

"If that parent wasn't using a car seat, it just multiplies the pain. You can clearly see it on their faces, knowing that they could have prevented their child's death."

As painful as it is to lose a child in an accident, Levy said unrestrained children can suffer a result that can be similarly tragic - reduction to a persistent vegetative state.

"To have a child that you knew in all of its facets; full of life, full of inquisitiveness and love," Levy said. "Then to have a daily reminder of all that was lost when you look down and see your child in this condition, and to know that the child will never recover. The burden on those parents is unimaginable."

If the threat of an accident is not enough to convince a parent to use a child seat, there's always the law to provide more impetus. Texas law requires all children younger than 2 to be restrained in a safety seat and all children 3 to 14 to wear a seat belt. Violators can be ticketed and fined up to $500, said Amarillo Police Cpl. Jerry Neufeld.

Many officers have little tolerance for parents who don't properly restrain their children.

"There's always discretion when it comes to handing out citations," Neufeld said. "But most of these officers are parents themselves and all of them have seen accidents where children have been killed or seriously hurt. I don't think most of them are going to have much sympathy for parents who aren't responsible enough to put their kids in car seats."

The law still doesn't cover all the children who need protection. Parents can legally move a 2-year-old to a seat belt, but the move is not a smart one, Neufeld said. Car seat belts are simply not designed for small children, and can allow a child to be ejected from the car or be thrown around inside the car.

No child should be allowed to ride with just a seat belt until the child weighs 80 pounds and is at least 4 feet, 9 inches tall, Neufeld said.

Finding the right seat for the right age child might seem complex, but Neufeld said there is a simple test parents can take to decide whether it's worth the effort.

"Any parent who isn't using child seats needs to take a look at their child and then figure out what their life would be like if that child was gone," Neufeld said. "Then they need to think about how they would feel if they knew for the rest of their lives they could have prevented their child from dying by something as simple as using a child seat. No one in their right mind is going to take that chance."